Gov't to hire 12,000 new nurses

CABANATUAN CITY, Philippines  – The Aquino administration is hiring 12,000 additional nurses and midwives to fill up the vacancies in hospitals and beef up health personnel in clinics and health centers in rural areas.

Health Secretary Enrique Ona, who was guest speaker at the 115th anniversary of the “Unang Sigaw ng Nueva Ecija,” said President Aquino will make a formal announcement including the details of the hiring plan within the next two weeks.

Ona said the mass hiring is also aimed at addressing the problem of jobless nurses – now almost 287,000 – and bring down nurse-to-patient ratio in state hospitals from 1:20 to an ideal 1:12.

He said the deployment of more nurses and midwives is also meant to bring down maternal deaths during child deliveries, noting that recent figures showed that an average of 150 mothers die per 100,000 deliveries.

“That is why we now have a program to empower regional health units and make them capable of rendering health services with the help of nurses and midwives,” he said.

Ona meanwhile said the government is allocating P12.5 billion for the payment of Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) premiums of 5.2 million Filipino families. He said the premium of PhilHealth members have been doubled from P1,200 to P2,400 per year. 

He said this is in line with the President’s directive to provide universal health coverage to all poor Filipinos in two to three years.

Ona also appealed to Filipinos who can afford to pay the premiums to enroll in the program and let only the poorest-of-the-poor to avail of the government subsidy. “When we say tuwid na daan, it only means that those who can’t afford to pay should avail of the subsidy while those capable of paying should pay,” he said.